ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire

We cannot sharply separate the process by which we come to have true beliefs from the process by which we try to become better persons. If we demand intellectual certainty about our beliefs before we begin to live out those beliefs, we will not make much progress on the intellectual questions themselves... progress in answering our intellectual questions goes hand in hand with progress in becoming better people. Our beliefs matter... but we cannot hope to settle questions of belief in a way that is prior to and independent of our struggle to become selves of a certain sort.